Charles Thilorier

Who is Charles Thilorier?

Charles-Saint-Ange Thilorier was a student at the École polytechnique in the class / year of 1815, who was mistakenly believed to have been the first person to create solid carbon dioxide. Actually, a French inventor, Adrien-Jean-Pierre Thilorier, discovered dry ice.

Unfortunately, in almost all of his technical articles, Adrien Thilorier gave his name simply as "Thilorier"; similarly, whenever others referred to him in technical articles, his name was also given only as "Thilorier". This impeded efforts by scholars to identify him subsequently. The confusion was compounded when Paul Thénard wrote a biography of his father, Louis Thénard, a French chemist: In 1835, Adrien Thilorier had created dry ice by spraying liquid carbon dioxide into a glass vessel. He had thought that the dry ice was merely snow; that is, water vapor from the atmosphere which had condensed as a result of the cold that the evaporation of the liquid carbon dioxide had produced. Louis Thénard had explained to Thilorier that his "snow" was actually solidified carbon dioxide. In a footnote of Louis Thénard's biography, Paul Thénard identified the "Thilorier" who discovered dry ice as "Charles-Saint-Ange Thilorier", a student at the École polytechnique in the class of 1815. This identification was mentioned by Duane H. D. Roller, a graduate student at Harvard University, in a paper that was published in 1952. Consequently, many sources claim that Charles-Saint-Ange Thilorier discovered dry ice.